In France, the situation is as follows7000 Flexfuel cars sold in 2012 ... but only 10 (read TEN) and 6 (read SIX) in May/June 2013 repectivelyNo more Flexfuel cars on sale from Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Dacia, Volvo ... Only ONE single Flexfuel car is still on sale nationwide : a Jeep Grand CherokeeIt is said that the European Commission decided at the end of 2012 that Europe should now limit the use of 1st generation ethanol to 5% of fuel ... which is already done with the popular E10 in France. I've not found any written text from the commission giving the rationale behind ... Do you have it ?

What about Sweden ?I've been told that the E85 car privilege for Stockholm congestion charge has been removed ... and also that some other fiscal privileges are no more applicable to E85 cars only but to any car below a certain CO2/km threshold ... Is that true ? Could you explain a litlle bit more ?

When going to Volvo Sweden website, I noticed that there is no Volvo Flexfuel V40 on sale ... only the S60/V60 and the old S80/V70 ... Do you have an explanation for that ? Why not a single E85 offer for a medium size car ?

When going to Renault or Dacia Swedish Websites, I noticed that some cars (megane, Scenic, Duster) are still on sale with the K4J 1L6 16V 110 HP (which exists in both petrol and petrol/E85 types ... all discontinued in France due to excessive CO2 emission with ... associated taxes) but only in the petrol type and not in the E85/Petrol type. Again do you have any explanation for that ?

As you see the Jeep Grand Cherokee is not available for ethanol and has never been. I'm about to update the page with two models from Koenigsegg which are for ethanol. In Sweden local politicians only talk about biogas and nationally... Well, it's very quiet, but if someone says something about carbon dioxide from cars, it's only electric cars that is mentioned.

As I said before, in France :- the Grand cherokee is the only Flexfuel survivor still for sale http://www.jeep.fr/11_grand_cherokee/flexfuel.html ... - all other flexfuel cars are no more on sale ... and I try to understand why ??? so I'd like to know the situation in Sweden which has been for long the European E85 leading country

In sweden :- are you still sure the renault 1L6 16V K4M is still available in E85 ... although I don't speak swedish, when going thru the links of the list you gave, I did not grasp neither the word E85 nor the word Flexfuel ?- what about the fiscal privileges which have been given to flexfuel cars such as congestion charge exemption, use of motorway B-line with one single person on baord, etc... are they still availbale ?Bye

Since car manufacture's sites always are fancy rather than functional I always try to find the broschure to each model as a pdf-file. Here are they proving that Renault Mégane (5-door and sport tourer) is available with ethanol engine:

It seems though that when I have read the broschures I have missed that the Scénic and Grand Scénic no longer is offered with ethanol engine, although the site http://www.miljofordon.se says that both models still is offered with ethanol engine. It seems that I have to update my site once more.

In the latest generation of engines for the new platform from VAG there is one E85-version of the 122 TSI (Multifuel) for the Swedish market. It is introduced in the new Golf and there will be no road tax during the first 5 years. Hopefully it will end up in Skodas,Seats and Audis as well and put pressure on other car manufacturers to adapt. I would like to see E85-versions in even smaller engines too and in range extenders.

Its a dark picture you paint, Ceyal35Unfortunately it is to pieces true.I think the coming 2-3 years will set the future, will we see popular hybrids, on gasoline, or diesel, take a signficant market share, or not?Will there come some electrial cars in numbers? Natural (biogas?)-cars?If not, car buyers on most markets will go back to what's found to be working and with a acceptable economy.My 5 pence on ethanol...

Since car manufacture's sites always are fancy rather than functional I always try to find the broschure to each model as a pdf-file. Here are they proving that Renault Mégane (5-door and sport tourer) is available with ethanol engine:http://www.renault.se/header/broschyrer ... SE-BD2.pdf (motor types on page 19)

In between, I asked the Agricultural Ethanol Consortium in France with the following question "why is there now so few native E85 cars for sale although there was a total of 7000 native E85 cars (mainly Dacia and Renault) sold in 2012 versus only 10 in May2013 and 6 in June 2013?"

As a follow up, I saked the Agricultural Ethanol Consortium in France with the following question " Great, but then how do you explain that the Dacia Duster 4x2 1L6 16V, one of the best E85 car sale in 2012 in France is still on sale in Sweden as indicated by http://www.dacia.se/sv/modeller/duster/ ... ifikation/ and not in France ?"

France has both- a high tax level on petrol and diesel - an heavy concurrence between the traditional petrol stations and hypermarkets (which are allowed to sell petrol in France which is not the case in many European countries)==> margin of petrol station owner on a liter of petrol/diesel sold is very low

E85 has a very low level of taxes ==> with an overall price around 0,8€, the possible margin on E85 is far better, roughly twice when compared with the one on petrol/diesel, which explains the increase of the number of stations.

Many people run old petrol cars with 50% E85 without any modification ... which explains the increase of volume sold ... that's it.

They are quasi no new flexfuel cars sold because, with the exception of the Grand Cherokee and Ford Focus, most of the flexfuel cars sold, with rather old engines, up to 2012 are no more able to pass the EURO5 European pollutant regulations. When considering in the same way both ethanol and petrol cars, that leads the tests to be performed at -7°C extremely difficult to be successful. Manufacturers got an additional 2 years delay to comply flexfuel cars with Euro5 ==> due to rather low level of sales, they just gave up and most of them stopped flexfuel production at the end of 2012 although there is a fiscal benefit for flexfuel cars of no CO2 tax (to be payed once for all cars above 130g CO2/km and which reaches 2250€ for a 2.0 liter petrol Laguna with 179g/CO2). On the oposite, there is no road tax in France to be paid yearly ; in addition the fiscal benefit of a "company car" is low which explains that companys buy only 25% of new cars sold to be compared with 66% in Germany.

I would be very interested to get a global overview of the situation in Sweden- price level or level oftaxes of E85 compared with petrol and Diesel- number of flexfuel cars sold in one year, evolution since 2011- which flexfuel cars are still on sale in Sweden ?- I understand that in Sweden, flexfuel cars do not pay for the road tax during 5 years ... what is the price level of such a road tax for a medium size car say a Ford Focus or a VAG Golf ?

As for the road tax not being applied for the first 5 years the rules changed a couple of years ago so a number of the Flexifuel cars which were on sale at that time suddenly no longer were "green cars", while several diesels remained "green"! That was IMO stupid!

I have a Renault Megane "Flexi" and a Saab 9-5 "Flexi". The Renault still has no tax, but it would be less than 1000 SEK per year as that is what the bigger Saab has.

Interesting to see 2 key elements - that many manufacturers just gave up and stop selling flex cars - VAG is selling direct injection petrol flex engines ... when E10 was introduced in France several years ago, manufacturers explicitly asked people not to use E10 with direct injection engines ... so many people do not know what to do with such cars ... the problem with direct injection petrol engines is that it emits ten times more particulates that any Euro5 Diesel ... and this is possible til 2017 see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgasnorm (table and Kritik)- vehicles above 130g/CO2 are difficult to sale in France

Hello- that many manufacturers just gave up and stop selling flex cars

I am still perplexed as to what really happened when E85 got "killed" here in Sweden. Part of it happening were technical problems with cars getting clogged injectors etc. The petrol companies and the car manufacturers were blaming each other, with a few exceptions like when there were contaminated E85 on the market for awhile. So the customer were left alone dealing with it... Then a lot of motor journalists started writing down E85 with often horrible bad logic and pure lies making the "average Joe" more and more against E85.

There were also a lot of writing about rain forests being cut down etc, also based on more or less "mythical" facts. That turned people even more against E85.

People also never accepted the fact that the fuel consumption is higher for E85, and I have several times seen people that are unable to calculate the cost for using E85 and so stating that it should cost 5 SEK/L(with petrol being 15 SEK/L) for E85 to be cheaper!

And then along came the diesel cars as the new "savior" being praised by almost every motor journalist etc! Historically we have never had that much diesel cars here in Sweden, far less than in Finland and I think in France too for ex. They have had high taxes as they have been regarded "dirty". Now that there no longer is visible black smoke they seem to have become "clean" and their taxes have been lowered several times. In fact they are considered so "clean" that they are not considered being a source of particles worth counting with despite the amount of particles going up in the cities, instead our use of studded tires became the "scapegoat" with restrictions for their use, both in time of the year and on certain roads.

The diesels not being a problem for the air, especially in the cities, stands in sharp contrast to what I have read is about to happen in your country as well as in the UK...!